Housing Policy

CFPB Changes Its Tactics Over TRID - More Clarity (Maybe More Cooperation?) To Come

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has softened its approach to the TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure.

After months of informal dialogue between the industry and CFPB on issues related to TRID, the CFPB chief broke his silence and released a letter to industry trades, saying that it will issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on TRID to provide greater...

The 2016 Water Resources Development Act

This May, congressional attention turned toward the passage of the new Water Resources Development Act (WRDA), a longstanding piece of federal legislation first enacted in 1974 and reauthorized nine times since. This bill is the main vehicle used by Congress to finance water infrastructure projects across the nation, including flood control efforts, environmental restoration measures,...

Laying the Groundwork for the Next Administration

Since the last election cycle, the Senate’s Banking, Housing, & Urban Affairs Committee has been one of the least active committees in Congress. From October 2015 through March of this year, the full committee held only a half dozen hearings, three of which were to address the backlog of executive nominations that had piled up over the previous years. Therefore, it was quite a...

Underscores Need for Accurate Property Tax Estimating Algorithms

Estimating property tax amounts throughout the United States is a challenging task due to the complexity and differences in taxing agencies across the country. That challenge is even more complicated in areas in which legislation caps tax increases for existing residents.

In 1978, California amended its Constitution to add Proposition 13, officially named the People's Initiative to...

More Affordable Housing, Plus Help for First Timers and Underwater Borrowers

Housing policy, which has pretty much been a back burner issue so far in this campaign, bubbled up to the top recently when Senator Bernie Sanders released a new policy paper that outlined his program for supporting homeownership, expanding affordable housing, helping underwater homeowners, and fighting homelessness.